Astute Windham shoppers may have recently noticed a change at the North Windham Shopping Center with the closure of A Touch of Country and the subsequent opening Robert and Denise LeClerc’s The Odd Shop.

Robert has a long history of owning bars and restaurants in Portland and neighboring communities. From 1975 to 1977, he owned Terroni’s Market near the Portland Expo. From 1977 to 1980, he switched gears and owned Danny’s nightclub at Woodford’s Corner in Portland. From 1980 to 1993, Robert owned the Country Squire, which is now Sydney’s in Naples. From 1993 to 1997, he owned the Raymond Lobster Pound which is where Montebello’s Ristorante is now located. Since 1997, the Seafood Shanty on Route 302 in South Casco has been LeClerc’s main business pursuit.

Wanting to get into a business where they could fulfill some of their own passions and hobbies, Robert and his wife Denise started the Odd Shop in early April. Jennifer Raymond serves as the manager of the store, which once was the home of the Gorham Savings Bank.

The Lakes Region Suburban Weekly recently sat down with the couple to discuss their new shop, which celebrated a grand opening May 3.

When did you start the business?

Denise: About two years ago we were toying with the idea of opening another business and we thought of another Seafood Shanty. And then last year, together we came up with doing something other than the food business. We spent the last six months laying the groundwork and developing the suppliers and spending numerous hours researching and finding the right products we’d like to carry in our shop and that people would hopefully like.

Robert: We have different and unusual stuff for people that you’re not really sure what they want. Basically, if we got it, you don’t need it. That’s our motto. I mean really, Windham needed a place with a good rubber chicken.

What do you carry?

Robert: We carry golf memorabilia, robots, Coca Cola memorabilia, tea accoutrements, Christian inspirational stuff, birdhouses, garden books, Elvis stuff, slot machines, different games, etc. It’s not your home and garden like in Wal-Mart. We’re very different. You’re not going to find what we have here someplace else in Windham. And you don’t have to go all the way to Portland to find something unique. The name I really wanted was Strange Things, but my wife didn’t like that.

It’s a very cheery atmosphere here, lots of soft purples. How did you pick the color scheme?

Denise: It was very dreary in here before, between the lighting and the color on the wall. It was a bank. And when Jennifer our manager asked me what colors I was going to use, I had no clue. But I asked God and God said these are the colors we’re going to use. He led me directly to the paint colors at Wal-Mart and then led us directly to the fabric, and they matched. Even the things we ordered matched and it was never deliberate. They just matched. Everything seemed to fit.

Where did you get your sign?

Robert: I decided to have a Coke memorabilia room and on a whim I called Coca cola and they gave us two 30-inch-by-18-foot signs that are grandfathered in, saving us a lot of money. It would have cost $3,000. We got to choose everything but they paid for it, and the only thing they asked in return was that we carry their product and we were going to do that anyway.

How did you find this spot next to the post office?

Robert: Having been a member of the Windham Chamber of Commerce for over 25 years, I’ve always wanted to have a business in Windham. I found this particular location and then I found out that the landlord is a Christian like myself, so that put me very at ease. In fact, I met him the very next day and we shook hands and it was a done deal. The location is great with the post office and Goodwill next door and there’s good visibility and traffic flow. We looked at other places, which would have been one-quarter the money, but it never felt right. Location, location, location.

How do you determine what to purchase for product.

Robert: Research online. The Internet’s been invaluable. And basically because we have a variety of ages from 21 to 56 between the managers and owners and male and female, we’ve just been buying stuff that we like and now we are asking the customers what they like; what are they looking for. And we’re tracking it. We write it down, keep it categorized. We’re already in to reordering it now.

You’re also trying to get an online Odd shop business going right?

Robert: Yes, as we have progressed in this we’ve already started developing a Web site, www.theoddshop.com, which is already up. We have a whole room here just for online shipping.

How does this business compare to other businesses you’ve had?

Robert: Of all the businesses I’ve owned, this has been the most rewarding to open, mainly because my wife decorated and it looks so much better than anything I can do. I wasn’t even going to paint it. You also don’t have to worry about food spoilage, rotation, maintaining temperatures. Let’s face it, if a food cooler goes at the Seafood Shanty and I don’t catch it that night, I’ve got 100 percent loss. Plus there are more regulations in the food business. This is simple, relatively low overhead and a lot more easy to track. Everything is bar-coded, we have total inventory control. We can monitor every room and it’s videotaped.

You have several rooms here. Little boutiques?

Robert: We have themed rooms. In the front room, we have the Coca Cola and golf rooms. People like Coke stuff. It brings back memories. We both play golf. In fact our living room in Florida is totally golf dA?©cor. So it was a natural progression for me, especially since I did both food and beverage at Naples Golf Course and Point Sebago Golf course. It was just a natural progression.

Denise: I do tea parties for my church every year and I do them on my own. I’m fascinated by the history of tea. I was going to open a tearoom actually so this was the next best thing.

How do you plan on advertising?

Well, we’ll be in the local papers as well as doing commercials on cable television, which is affordable for local businesses. Spread out over the entire year, we’ve got like a $4,000 budget, which is affordable and they threw up a free commercial. But the bottom line is word of mouth. We’ve got to be good at what we do. If we don’t have the product that people are looking for, we won’t make it.

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